Happiness & Courage Quotes: Blooming into Ourselves

Among the innumerable works of man, the most important, no doubt, is his own person. John Stuart Mill

Growing Continually

As long as you live, keep learning how to live. Latin Proverb

It's vital to be growing through your life rather than going through your life. The object is not to change other people or situations; it's to do the inner work they stimulate. Wally Amos

The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my pursuit after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things. Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly... Mahatma Gandhi

People deal too much with the negative, what is wrong....Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom. Thich Nhat Hanh

The powers of reason, of love, of artistic and intellectual creation, all essential powers grow through the process of being expressed. Erich Fromm

Who are you?, said the Caterpillar...I-I hardly know, Sir, just at present," Alice replied rather shyly, "at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then." Lewis Carroll, from Alice in Wonderland

Observing Ourselves

...self-observation means watching--observing whatever is going on in you and around you as if it were happening to someone else. Anthony de Mello

You have to watch, as you watch a lizard going by, walking across the wall, seeing all its four feet, how it sticks to the wall, you have to watch it, and as you watch, you see all the movements, the delicacy of its movements. So in the same way, watch your thinking, do not correct it, do not suppress it--do not say it is too hard--just watch it... J. Krishnamurti

Your awareness is different from both your thoughts and your senses. Ram Dass

We're always fixing things, aren't we? It never strikes us that things don't need to be fixed. They really don't. ...They need to be understood. If you understood them, they'd change. Anthony de Mello

He who is fretted with his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm, peaceful mind. Saint Francis de Sales

When there is inward awareness of every activity of your mind and your body, when you are aware of your thoughts, of your feelings, both secret and open, conscious and unconscious, then out of this awareness there comes a clarity that is not induced, not put together by the mind...without that clarity...you will never find out what is true. J. Krishnamurti

By your own efforts
Waken yourself, watch yourself,
And live joyfully. Buddha

Valuing Courage

Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism. ...courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible. Rollo May

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. Anaïs Nin

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once. William Shakespeare

Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it. Mark Twain

Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them. Orison Swett Marden

Many of our fears are tissuepaper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us through them. Brendan Francis

Taking Risks

Courageous risks are life giving, they help you grow, make you brave and better than you think you are. Joan L. Curcio

...to venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of one's self. Soren Kierkegaard

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

And the day came when the risk [it took] to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Anais Nin

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Helen Keller

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. Seneca

Safety is the most unsafe spiritual path you can take. Safety keeps you numb and dead. People are caught by surprise when it is time to die. They have allowed themselves to live so little. Stephen Levine

Joy is the concomitant of productive activity. It is not a "peak experience," which culminates and ends suddenly, but rather a plateau, a feeling state that accompanies the productive expression of one's essential human faculties. ...Joy then, is what we experience in the process of growing nearer to the goal of becoming ourselves. Erich Fromm

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a matter of traveling. Margaret Runbeck

The one who would be constant in happiness must frequently change. Confucius

Joy is man's passage from a lesser to a greater perfection. Baruch Spinoza

...there shall be no end to our central joy when once we ascend to the stratosphere of our richer abilities. Helen Keller